


Best Practices for Extenuating Circumstances

by Nevanna



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Control, Nausea, Supernatural Illnesses, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28538349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: As Martin's health worsens in Jon's absence, he reluctantly accepts help from Elias.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35
Collections: The_Magnusquerade





	Best Practices for Extenuating Circumstances

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to alliedwolves for beta-reading and to anysin for her enthusiasm!

By the time Elias appeared in the break room, Martin had already nearly dropped his mug twice. He hissed as the boiling water splashed onto his fingers, and set the cup firmly on the counter. He’d been dragging his feet all evening, but it looked like his tea had woken him up before he took a single sip.

“Don’t you think you should go home?” Elias asked mildly. Martin had seen him laughing around sharpened fangs, admitting to murder and worse, but in the moment, Elias seemed so calmly professional, so politely concerned, so _human ._

“Maybe.” The idea of returning to his flat, alone and queasy with worry, didn’t exactly appeal to Martin, even before it nudged at memories of Jane Prentiss’s siege, and the suspicion that those memories were far from complete. “If I stay here, we might...”

Elias reached out to pat his shoulder. “I promise that if I learn anything of Jon’s whereabouts, I’ll let you know.”

Martin stepped back and clenched his fists, partly to keep them from shaking. “Am I supposed to believe that?” he asked, thinking, _you knew exactly where he was the last time he disappeared._

Elias answered his thoughts smoothly: “The last time Jon disappeared, he wasn’t yet responsible for you and Tim. I certainly wouldn’t have presented our Archivist with two new thralls if I’d known you’d find yourselves starved for his blood shortly afterward.”

At the mention of Jon’s blood, Martin’s own heart sped up, and his breathing went shallow with _need_. “What’s going to happen to us?” he managed.

“Hopefully, we’ll resolve these… unexpected difficulties before anything too drastic _does_ happen.” Elias’s eyes gleamed as if he knew that that wasn’t an answer at all. “But I’d recommend that you rest while you can. And if you need some respite from your worries, there’s no shame in that.”

Martin pushed past Elias, down the corridor, and out the door before he could think too hard about the meaning of those words. He texted Tim on his way to the train, but wasn’t surprised at the brief, dismissive response.

Sleep, when it finally crept up on Martin, was far from restful.

Waking up, with the remembered taste of blood on his lips, was worse.

\---

A hand on Martin’s shoulder yanked him back into awareness. He scrambled to his feet, which made his stomach heave although there was nothing in it. Even a slice of toast tasted like cardboard, and didn’t stay down for long; each sip of water left his throat drier than before. At some point, he’d collapsed over his desk, and opened his eyes to find Elias standing over him. 

Before Martin could croak out a habitual apology, Elias shook his head. “I think that we can call these extenuating circumstances, don’t you agree? You haven’t been sleeping well, have you?”

Jon had been missing for nearly two weeks. Martin spent most nights at the Institute, unable to muster the energy to leave. He’d pored multiple times over the statements that Jon had apparently looked into most recently, checking in everywhere that the Archives might have thought to conduct follow-up. If Jon had any close friends or contacts outside of work, apart from Georgie Barker, Martin knew nothing about them, even now. When it came to enemies, on the other hand… well, Jane Prentiss was about as dead as it was possible to be, but what if another vampire from her clan had gotten hold of Jon? Or one of the creatures linked to the “Unknowing” business he kept talking about? Or, or… Martin felt tears start to form in his eyes again. Even as they flowed down his cheeks, his throat still burned, dry as dust. 

Elias seemed so _concerned,_ still in that businesslike way. “If you’re wondering whether I enjoy seeing you and Tim in this state, please believe that I do not,” he continued. “Unfortunately, there is very little that I can do to ease your discomfort, short of feeding you my own blood -- which I will, if I must, but it might cause more than a few complications when Jon turns up. I can assure you, with some confidence, that he did not _forsake_ you deliberately.”

Elias’s words brought the faintest echoes of memory, some of which Martin halfway understood (lunging forward on his couch, with what little strength he had, to drink from Elias’s wrist), while others carried sensations that confused him even more. The room spun again, and he grabbed the edge of his desk. He needed to get back to work, to concentrate on… he couldn’t quite recall what he’d been reading before he lost consciousness.

Elias gently pushed the papers away, leaning over Martin. “I can, however, offer you a chance to rest in a peaceful memory,” he went on. “You would believe, for a time, that you were somewhere else: it would provide a diversion from your physical and mental distress, and perhaps restore some of your energy.”

Martin frowned. “How do I know you won’t…?” His words slurred together, and he waved one hand around his head to approximate, _twist my brain beyond all recognition._

Elias raised an eyebrow. “How did you know that _Jon_ wouldn’t, the last time you let him in? You simply had to _trust_ , didn’t you? I can only offer a promise that I would not disrupt what he intends for your mind. Is that sufficient?”

\---

_A hand smoothed Martin’s hair gently and rhythmically, the most important sensation in the secure warmth that surrounded him. Cool, scarred fingers dipped to stroke his face, and Jon whispered, “You can stay here for as long as you need to, dearest. We have nowhere else to be.” Martin nuzzled Jon’s thigh and mumbled words of relief, gratitude, love, without caring whether they made sense…_

“...doing to him?”

“Only what he asked for, Tim. I suspect that you want everybody to be as miserable as you are, but...”

_The shouting was very distant, and Jon’s smooth caresses did not falter, but Martin’s overwhelming sense of peace retreated, and he curled more tightly into himself (suddenly aware of his own body again) as he tried to hold onto it…_

“Let him go, _now_!”

Martin slammed back into reality. He was kneeling by his own desk chair, where -- he made himself look up -- Elias sat calmly. Tim stood a few feet away, glaring and disheveled, one hand braced on his own desk for support. And Jon was nowhere to be seen.

Another wave of sickness rose in Martin’s throat. He swallowed it, squeezed his eyes shut to keep from crying again, and wrapped both arms around himself.

“Well?” Elias’s voice was casual. “You told me to release him. I must admit, it’s been a long time since you were so determined to protect those around you.”

“You thought it was the best time to fucking _feed_ on him?” Tim demanded. “When he’s… when we’re both…”

“I did no such thing,” Elias replied. “I merely stimulated a few of his more pleasant memories in order to distract him from your current circumstances. I would be more than willing to do the same for you, if you ask me _nicely_ _._ I know how much you miss taking kayaks out on the river with your brother…”

Tim clenched his fist. “One more word, and I swear I will throw up on you.”

“As you like.” Elias stood, smoothed his trousers, and gave Martin’s hair a final pat. “Do let me know if you reconsider. I’m sure that your master wouldn’t object, _if_ we ever see him again.” 

Tim rounded on Martin as soon as the door closed behind Elias. “Hope you’re not expecting an apology for interrupting your little trip down memory lane.”

“I don’t… you were…” Martin shook his head. “It wasn’t real. I know that.” He also suspected that if he’d let it continue, he would stop caring.

“The thing that’d make _me_ happiest right now would be getting to yell at Jon again.” Tim sounded only a tiny bit less angry as he told Martin, “You’d better not try to stop me.”

A few days ago, Martin would have protested that Jon _wouldn’t_ choose to leave them, but at the moment, he could barely find the energy to argue. 

And by the time Jon _did_ return to them, finally allowing them to drink from him again, Martin was almost too relieved to care that he’d been right.

\---

 _His throat was dry, his veins felt scorched and shriveled, and he’d lost track of how many vampires had approached his cage. Sometimes they looked like people he knew, and sometimes they looked like_ him _, and when they wore the faces of his thralls, he begged for their help or sobbed out apologies, but soon he was lunging for their throats as laughter rose around him, because he was so_ thirsty…

Martin was coughing and gasping even before he opened his eyes. Jon helped him to sit up, kept an arm around him while his breathing evened out, fetched him a drink of water, before returning to sit beside him on the bed. “Take your time, love,” he said as Martin drained the glass. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. Unless you projected your memories at me on purpose like…” Martin set down the glass. “Well, anyhow. We’re all safe now, yeah?”

“For the time being,” Jon agreed. “I still don’t have as much information about the Unknowing as I’d like… and certainly not as much as Tim would like.”

“You were a little too busy to gather coherent intelligence!” Martin pointed out. “God, Jon, I thought I knew what it was like to be hungry for blood, but I didn’t really understand until just…” Words failed him again, and he opened his arms. Jon leaned into them gratefully, and Martin wondered how he could ever have thought that the illusory embrace that Elias had crafted was any substitute for the real thing.

“We all had a bad time of it,” Jon reminded him. “Don’t forget that.”

“At least I wasn’t alone for mine. And maybe it helped that...” 

Jon drew back a little. “That what?”

Martin knew that he could say, “Nothing,” could continue to avert his eyes, and Jon would leave it alone. But there was always a chance that he’d find out accidentally what Martin had let Elias do, or -- even worse, but every bit as likely -- that Elias would take enormous pleasure in describing it. “When you came back, and you and Tim and I were, you know, feeding from each other, how much could you see in our minds?”

Jon considered the question. “I think that I saw some memories from those three weeks, but they were entangled with emotions and nightmares and… imagined realities, I suppose. I could try to sort out which was which, but it would take a conscious effort.” He touched Martin’s forehead. “Would you like me to try?”

Martin shook his head. “I’d rather… there’s something that I want to tell you, about what happened while you were gone,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to like hearing it, but I want to say it in words.”

“I’ve heard a lot of things that I didn’t like, over the past couple of years,” Jon reminded him. “Even terrible information can still be valuable… and even terrible information is unlikely to change how I feel about you.”

Martin squeezed Jon's hands. As much as he hated admitting when Elias was right, sometimes he simply had to trust.


End file.
